


Carry it with No Regrets

by stallide



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Don't copy to another site, Tim Drake is Robin, Tim Drake-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-06 04:32:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18843706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stallide/pseuds/stallide
Summary: Tim tries his hand at writing fanfiction. It does not go how he expected it would..“Bruce, there’s— there’s— Jason, he, his grave, please just— he’s not there, Bruce!”There is a hole in the center of Jason Todd’s grave as if someone had crawled out of the grave in a panic.The scene looks exactly like he wrote it.





	1. I. Death I think is no parenthesis

Alright so this was… a new low even for him, honestly.

It was 3:27 am. His parents weren’t home— when were they ever?— and he wasn’t staying over at Wayne Manor tonight— it was a school night, there was no patrol; there was no reason to intrude. He should be resting, he had to be up by six to get ready for school, but—

The site stared him down like the gaping maw of a great white or like the view of looking out at a blizzard from a window or like a blender edging closer to his face, blades whirling—

Tim scrubbed at his face. He was tired. It was a Tuesday night and he hadn’t slept a full night since he’d been bundled into his guest room at Wayne Manor on Saturday after patrol. He must be more out of it if he thought the blender downstairs was out to get him.

He glanced over at the site again, flicking his mouse over the categories, until he settled over the tag that had been made for the growing number of heroes, villains, and vigilantes. It takes only a bit of maneuvering and trying to figure out the tags used for different people. 

It’s a bit of a mess to find the tags for Robin, there’s #one robin, where people have melded the first three Robins as one sole child running amok and chasing after Batman’s cape. There’s a blend of other tags for each of them: for Dick, there’s #punny robin, #acroBAT, and #golden boy. For Jason there’s #second best robin, #nerdy robin, and #redhead robin. And then for Tim there’s: #third robin’s the charm, #sassmaster robin, and #techie robin.

There’s a slew of #dead robin tags too which makes Tim’s stomach roll itself into knots. It’s not just about Jason’s death— that has its own conspiracy tags— but about him and Dick too. There’s plenty of “Au’s” depicting gory and angsty deaths for the three of them. There’s some that have Batman pitting them against each other for the title of Robin. It’s enough to make Tim feel sick just glancing at the descriptions.

But then there’s happier stories. Small works depicting Batman taking the three Robins out for ice cream. There’s some stories where Nightwing takes the two Robins that came after him under his wing and helps them train. There’s stories that have the three Robins banding together to save the day.

Some of these stories are nice, but a lot of them _aren’t_.

(It’s painful to see so many angst-ridden stories where the heroespartners ~~family~~ friends he’s come to know and care for are forced into near-nonstop arguments. It almost reminds him of what Dick said it was like back before Jason’s death. It almost reminds him of what it’s like when Jason’s name comes up in conversation.)

Some of the stories are nice, some are interesting, but a lot of them are uhm—

Tim narrows his eyes at a few of them, wondering if they had the ability to transcend through the screen of his laptop and bite his head off. The worry is placed into a slot on his mental list of worries right beside man-eating blenders.

Tim rubs at his eyes.

He keeps scrolling and considers.

It’s not hard to make an account; the hardest part is coming up with a name— the right sort of name that’s witty while being inconspicuous. It’s a bit harder to gather up the energy to start typing and actually put some ideas down on paper. It’s surprisingly difficult to actually write something that doesn’t come out sounding like an essay or a report— something that people might _actually want_ to read.

He wheels his chair away from his desk and starts digging in the closet for his photo albums. He’s not really looking for anything; just trying to get ideas for a story when he finds himself pausing on a picture of Jason— it’s from over a year ago; in the picture, Jason was grinning as he took a running leap from a building. The picture was taken just before Jason used his grappling hook, so it gave off the impression that Jason had been leaping up to fly on his own. It gave off the impression that he _could_.

Tim drags his computer chair back towards his desk and glances out at his window— it’s pouring and thunder and lightning have been playing a game of tag across the sky for the past half hour.

Tim begins to write.

.

_The memories came to him in pieces— the Joker’s laugh, his screams, the bomb— but he doesn’t come to lying on the floor of the warehouse like he expected he would. No, this place is darker and the air is heavy. It’s hard to breathe and when he pushes his hands up, they smack into wood. There is wood all around him and he can’t breathe and he needs, he needs, he needs—_

_Robin pushes against the wood, punches it, tears it, until it begins to crumble beneath his hands, and suddenly something else is pouring on top of him, something wet and muddy—_

_He’s been buried. Batman buried him._

_He starts scrabbling to dig himself out, uncaring that the skin on his hands is tearing or that his nails are breaking, he claws himself out of the dirt and—_

_He is met with air and water and for a moment he forgets how to breathe and just leans half out of his grave, hair slick with mud and water._

_Lightning streaks across the sky and lights up the cemetery and Robin finds himself alone. There was no one there to see him rise from his own grave._

_(He tries not to think that there was no one there to see him die either.)_

_The storm reaches a crescendo as he pulls himself out of the grave, gasping for breath._

_One word tumbles out of his mouth, unbidden, the cry of a lost child, “B_ —”

.

In the end, he doesn’t post it. He’d wanted to write something happier, something cheerful, but he was tired and the storm raging outside only served to remind him that Bruce was out patrolling tonight— without him, without Robin— and that the ground around Jason’s grave would be muddy and wet.

He doesn’t post it; just shuts his laptop off and rolls right into bed, resolving to leave some flowers on Jason’s grave tomorrow morning.

It’s been six months since his death.

.

He rolls out of bed at six in the morning and readies himself for school, rushing a bit to get dressed so that he can swing by a florist to pick up some flowers to lay on Jason’s grave. He pedals towards the cemetery and leaves his bike tied to the gate. It’s still too early for the groundskeeper to make his rounds, much less open the gate, so Tim swings himself over using the practice he’s acquired as Robin.

He walks a memorized path through the graves, until he spots the angel that stands guard over Jason’s. He’s rounding the curve of gravestones when he freezes.

The bouquet of flowers falls onto the still-muddy ground.

Tim’s hand shakes as he grabs his phone from his pocket; not even glancing at the screen as he hits speed-dial. He doesn’t take his eyes off the scene for fear that he’ll blink and all the evidence will disappear.

“Tim. What is it?”

Somewhere in his mind, behind the muffled haze of shock and confusion, Tim notes that Bruce is tired because he doesn’t usually finish patrol until around four in the morning and if he managed to fall asleep by five, Bruce would have been in the middle of a sleep cycle right about now.

“Bruce, Bruce, you— you have to—”

“Deep breaths, Tim. Count them with me. In for five, out for five.”

Tim breathes and finds himself gagging on the air, gagging on the words; his breakfast rises up and he pukes all over the wet grass.

“Bruce, there’s— there’s— Jason, he, his grave, please just— he’s not there, Bruce!”

By the end of it he’s shouting, or trying to, at least, his words are coming out ragged and out-of-breath as if he were trying to scream after running a marathon.

He kind of does feel like screaming.

“Tim, Tim calm down, I don’t understand what you’re saying—”

A few feet in front of Tim lies Jason’s grave, and through the center of the grave, is a hole surrounded by piles of dirt. There is a hole in the center of Jason Todd’s grave as if someone had crawled out of the grave in a panic.

The scene looks exactly like he wrote it.


	2. II. What if the sword kills the pen?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason was alive… right after Tim had written him back to life in a fanfic.
> 
> It was just a poor case of coincidence, right?
> 
> Jason had dragged himself out of the grave between four and five in the morning.
> 
> Between four and five, Tim had been writing. 
> 
> _It was just a coincidence_ , Tim tells himself as his fingers work crescents into his arms, nails biting against his skin. _This is stupid. Who ever heard of fanfiction coming to life?_

Bruce shows up to the graveyard as he always does, in a flurry of dramatic movement that, were he in costume, would consist of a whirl of his cape and the ability to seemingly step right out of the shadows. He’s wearing a suit instead, no jacket, tie haphazardly done, the sleeves of the white dress shirt unbuttoned and creased; as if he got dressed in three minutes. From Wayne Manor, it’s ten minutes by car and Tim’s been sitting on the ground, leaning against the grave next to Jason's for about seven minutes. They’re lucky it’s early and the roads between the Manor and the cemetery are usually rather empty.

Tim notices the moment when Bruce sees the state of Jason’s grave; sees as he spots all the clues Tim noticed before he called Bruce— the hole, the dirt, the trampled grass, the coffin splinters, the scuff of dress shoes, a broken fingernail, and even the fallen cufflink half-buried in the dirt. Tim sees him hesitate; glance between the empty grave and Tim. He knows that he looks a mess, and he knows that Bruce can see it, the details are laid out for him with the clarity of a microscope— the blood on his fingers and white uniform shirt, (from when he pinched himself, to make sure it was real, that he wasn’t dreaming or hallucinating or making it up), the dirt and grass stains on his pants from sitting on the ground since the call, the speck of vomit on his sleeve from when he wiped his mouth, the streaks on his face from crying, his hands, that haven’t stopped trembling, shaking, quivering since he dropped the bouquet, his breaths that are still gasping, heaving, he’s still having trouble remembering to take in air—

(Bruce is looking between Tim and the grave, between a living Robin and a dead-turned-living Robin, and it makes sense which he’ll pick. Logically it does, Tim knows this; it doesn’t even bother him. Bruce needs to focus on the grave; on Jason, before the trail turns cold and they lose their chance to find him and bring him home. Tim will be fine, he’s just going into shock; just needs a minute. Better for Bruce to focus on finding Jason than on him—)

Bruce kneels down in front of him and gently places his hands on Tim’s shoulders, as if Bruce is afraid that Tim will break like his mother’s fine china. 

“Breathe with me, Tim. Come on, in— one, two, three, four, five, out— one, two, three, four, five.”

Bruce ushers him through the breathing exercise for a few minutes and Tim tries to get his breathing under control because they’re wasting time, time they need in order to find Jason, in order to figure out  _ how _ Jason came back, but he

(doesn’t understand why Bruce picked him. He’s fine. He’s alive. He’ll  _ be fine _ . They need to focus on finding Jason. Batman needs his Robin back. At the end of the day, Tim doesn’t matter. Not  _ like that _ .)

tries to relax. He lets himself breathe and gives Bruce a nod before he slides Bruce’s hands off his shoulders. Tim scoots closer to the open grave before he starts giving a report, falling back into Robin training in a shoddy attempt at normalcy. 

“Before heading to school, I stopped by the flower shop down the street to order a bouquet to leave on Jason’s grave. The cemetery gate was locked and the groundskeeper doesn’t make his rounds until eight. The cemetery doesn’t open until half past eight and there is no one guarding the graves between four and eight in the morning.”

This was knowledge he’d picked up after swinging by a few times after patrols. The night shift ended at four, though the cameras ran from four through eight around the perimeter of the cemetery, but not near the graves themselves. If Jason had crawled out of his grave, they would have to hope there was evidence of his departure from the cemetery somewhere on the cameras.

“I climbed over the gate and walked over to his grave to leave the flowers when I saw the hole. I… panicked and called you and lost my breakfast somewhere back there and,” Tim pauses and fiddles with his fingers for a second, wiping the blood away on his shirt— it’s already dirty anyway.

“The grave’s been disturbed, though evidence points towards it being from the inside rather than from the outside. The ground around the hole is too rigid and packed, so the dirt didn’t accidentally cave in due to the storm yesterday.”

Tim hesitates for a moment and glances towards Bruce. A short nod follows his explanation, followed by a silent  _ continue, Robin _ .

He does so.

“The coffin was punched through from the inside, seen by the angle of the splinters,” he points at the haphazard spray of wood littered around the hole, “and the edges of the hole in the coffin. Due to both the length of the storm and the change in shift, it was likely between four and five in the morning. He dug himself out before the storm ended, but after the shift change.” 

Tim looks at the patterns around the side of the hole, the curve in the dirt like someone digging their fingers into the ground; the slight displacement of earth as if someone had leaned against it. He remembers what he had written. 

_ He is met with air and water and for a moment he forgets how to breathe and just leans half out of his grave, hair slick with mud and water.  _

“He paused once he broke through the surface and leaned against the opening to catch his breath. He dug his fingers into the earth to drag himself out and lost a fingernail and a cufflink at some point between digging and dragging himself out.”

Tim then points over at the trampled grass and the indents in the mud beside the hole.

“He dragged himself out and then managed to stand. He was favoring his right leg.”

The prints on the ground are the right size and the patterns are dress shoes. They seem to match the ones Jason was buried in, but they need to run them through the database first, same with the nail. The cufflink is easier to place, it has the Wayne W on it, so it’s most likely one of the pair on the jacket Jason’s corpse had been buried in.

Bruce doesn’t say anything, just nods again and starts picking up the evidence in clear evidence bags— the nail, the cufflink, the dirt and splinters; he even does a cast on the finger indentations and the shoeprint. 

.

It will take a few hours for the program to check the fingernail against the DNA they have on file for Jason. The shoeprint was a match and Bruce was running Jason’s face through an algorithm to see if the street cameras had caught anything. The cameras at the cemetery hadn’t been working between three and five, when the storm was at its worst and the power had gone out in the building. 

Tim had been sent back home with promises that he would be called if they found anything or if the DNA turned out to be a match.

Technically, he was told to eat something and get some rest because he looked like he hadn’t slept in a while.

Which, while true, wasn’t really the point.

Jason was alive, probably.

Jason was alive… right after Tim had written him back to life in a fanfic.

It was just a poor case of coincidence, right? 

(The grave had been empty. The coffin had been torn open from the inside.)

Jason had dragged himself out of the grave between four and five in the morning.

Between four and five, Tim had been writing. He had been done by five and had gotten a full hour of sleep before he had to wake up and get ready for school.

_ It was just a coincidence _ , Tim tells himself as his fingers work crescents into his arms, nails biting against his skin.  _ This is stupid. Who ever heard of fanfiction coming to life? _

He stared at his laptop for a few minutes, mind wavering. He should be getting some rest, he’ll need it if he’s going to help Bruce with the investigation… if Bruce still wants his help.

(Until they can get Jason back safe and sound, Batman still needs him. After… after, it’ll be fine. Things will go back to how they were before. He’ll be fine, he’s sure.)

But it’s bothering him. It’s just such an odd coincidence— there’s got to be a way to test it. It’s not like he has to write anything long and complicated, just… a few short paragraphs, a short scene. That should be enough, right?

He reaches for his laptop.

.

_ Robin was tired. It had been several hours since he’d dug himself out of his grave and he’d barely had the energy to keep moving, though he continued to drag himself further and further from the cemetery. He tried to drag himself closer to home; closer to B who would be able to help him.  _

_ The roads were still slick with water and crusted with mud from the storm the night before, and Robin noted, almost dispassionately, that the suit he’d been buried in was torn and dirty.  _

_ There were few houses along the road, and the further he went, the fewer houses there were. He’d been walking for a while before his body grew too tired to continue and he was forced to stop to take a break.  _

_ There was a manor sitting before him and he couldn’t be more than a mile off from where he had to go, but he was so tired. He forced himself up the steps until he was leaning heavily against the doorbell. _

_ It rang for two whole minutes before Robin heard the sound of footsteps and the door was pulled open.  _

_ A boy a few years younger than him opened the door, staring at him in a mixture of disbelief and hope. _

_ “J—” _

.

Tim’s forced to stop midway through the scene, his fingers freezing over the keyboard as he stares up from the screen. The sound echoes through the manor’s empty halls and reaches all the way up to his room.

The doorbell is ringing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i should probably sleep instead of writing more chapters, esp. since the day after i posted ch1, i kept staring at it in a mix of confusion/disappointment. this chapter... isn't much better. i am tired. i have just played through six rounds of clue instead of sleeping or doing homework. does the detective-y part make sense? it did to my sleep-addled mind, but ??? take it w/ a grain of salt.
> 
> this chapter's title comes from The Sword & the Pen by Regina Spektor.

**Author's Note:**

> kinda just... throws the timeline out the window. will there be updates? heck yeah, though when they'll be written/posted is up for debate. also, honestly, i'm still trying to catch up w/ the comics and i'm just incredibly behind so there's going to be inconsistencies or just mistakes all over. maybe someday once i'm caught up i'll be able to go through this fic and just fix all the errors... someday. 
> 
> also, this was honestly inspired by all the fics that have members of the batfam either reading or writing fanfics, it just... spiraled away from crack and humor and became... whatever this is supposed to be.
> 
> the title comes from The Weight of Living (Part I) by Bastille. chapter 1's title is from E.E. Cummings' "Since Feeling is First."


End file.
